These lines from the description of Achilles’ shield contain the only example (l. 499) of εὔχομαι in Homer which does not fall into the categories already discussed. It merits special treatment because its context—which is not sacral, not secular, but legal—is unique in the Homeric corpus. Special treatment of legal usages is customary for Indo-European languages because their legal traditions are extremely old. Consequently a word that participates in them may acquire or retain meanings that are not predictable from other usages. [1] As a corollary, the often-made assumption that sacral usages are primary and that legal usages are dependent upon them is not a dependable methodological tool. It is more productive and rigorous to begin by assuming that sacral and legal language developed in parallel rather than in sequence.

Ideal method, then, presupposes separate treatment of legal usages. But in this case there is only one legal usage, a fact which makes the discussion of εὔχομαι’s meaning in it especially difficult. There are no phraseological parallels to Σ 499 within the Homeric texts to support an analysis of this passage. The resultant mass of scholarship on this line offers several different opinions based on the etymology of εὔχομαι and searching internal analysis {100|101} of Σ 499's grammar and context. As an example, here is a sketch of Benveniste's view. [2] First he analyzes other attestations of εὔχομαι and its cognates in Latin and Indo-Iranian in such a way as to show that the sacral notion ‘s’engagerà’ or ‘faire voeu’ is a historically primary meaning of the root. Then he translates Σ 499–500 ‘l’un s’engage à tout payer, l’autre refuse de rien recevoir,’ a version which, he claims, has more dramatic significance than the orthodox ‘l’un prétend avoir tout payé, l’autre nie avoir rien reçu.’ [3] If his translation is correct, the violent quarrel in the passage concerns a dynamic issue, the lex talionis itself, whether the murder should be avenged or fined. But if the orthodox version stands, the quarrel centers on the drier question of whether or not the fine was actually paid. Benveniste then musters grammatical arguments in his favor as well as aesthetic ones. ἀναίνομαι, he says, never means ‘deny’ in Homer, and εὔχομαι never refers to the past or a completed act, only to an actual or future one. Moreover, the orthodox translation stretches aorist infinitives (ἀποδοῦναι, ἐλέσθαι) to mean ‘to have paid’, ‘to have received’, while his own does not.

Under the circumstances, this is the best method available, but it is executed with more attention to detail by André Corlu, the author of a dissertation on words for prayer in Greek. [4] Corlu takes exception to the same orthodoxy as Benveniste. In his opinion, εὔχετο πάντ᾽ ἀποδοῦναι in Σ 499 means ‘souhaitait tout payer’ [5] as opposed to ἀναίνετο … ἑλέσθαι ‘refusait de recevoir’. Though it emerges from his discussion that εὔχομαι can refer to past actions [6] and that ἀναίνομαι occurs in Homer—though without an infinitive—in the sense ‘deny’, his solution avoids the special pleading to justify such exceptional events in Σ 499–500. He also brings to light a further grammatical problem of the same sort and consequence. The pleonastic μηδέν in Σ 500 ἀναίνετο μηδέν ἐλέσθαι # must be considered a special “dénégation emphatique” replacing οὐδέν [7] if ἀναίνετο means ‘was denying’. No need arises to justify the μη of μηδέν if ἀναίνετο means ‘was refusing’. Finally Corlu's analysis of the legal situation is more radical than Benveniste's. His translation, he claims, makes the quarrel dramatic, while the orthodox view makes an issue of something that is not even a {101|102} legitimate subject for dispute. Only a witness could resolve whether or not the fine was paid, and none is mentioned.

There are other views of this passage as well. Among those in favor of the orthodoxy Benveniste and Corlu argue against are K. Latte, J. Wackernagel, E. Fraenkel, and various legal historians, including R. J. Bonner, G. Smith, and G. M. Calhoun. [8] The author of another recent dissertation on εὔχομαι, Albrecht Citron, [9] accepts the opinion of Latte and Wackernagel, which we can epitomize by the latter's translation of Σ 499–500, “der eine gab die Erklärung ab, daß er alles zurückgegeben habe, der andere aber leugnete, irgend etwas bekommen zu haben.”

There is nothing decisive to add to a discussion on this level. One flaw in the versions of Corlu, Benveniste, and also Chantraine, [10] is their translation of ἑλέσθαι in Σ 500 as ‘recevoir’ or ‘accepter’, though it should mean ‘to take’. δέξασθαι means ‘recevoir’, and it is formulaic with ποινή and ἄποινα, while ἑλέσθαι is not. [11] The difference is damaging to a translation of ἀναίνετο as ‘refused’ in ἀναίνετο μηδὲν ἑλέσθαι, since ‘refused to get anything’ does not make sense in the context as these scholars have interpreted it. ‘Denied he had taken anything’ = Wackernagel’s ‘irgend etwas bekommen zu haben’.

But on the whole these lines are best considered a crux which cannot be convincingly resolved on the basis of such methods and evidence. New evidence does, in fact, exist, but it has been overlooked. Analysis of the following Linear Β tablet from Pylos can raise the discussion of Σ 499–500 to a more objective level:

No adequate equivalents have been found for some of the real-estate terminology in this tablet, but the general picture is clear enough for our purposes. {102|103} There is a dispute between a priestess and the δᾱμος qua public official about the kind of ownership she has of a piece of land. E-ri-ta, the priestess, has and εὐχετοι [12] to have e-to-ni-jo (land) in the god’s name, while (δε) the δᾱμος φᾱσι that she (μιν) has o-na-to (opposite of e-to-ni-jo land) from the κτοιναι (lots) ke-ke-μεναι. The latter seem to be ‘public lands’ as opposed to κτοιναι ki-ti-μεναι ‘privately owned lands’. [13]

One scholar of εὔχομαι has introduced this tablet into the discussion of Σ 499. He claims that its attestation of εὔχομαι has sacral connotations because its subject is a priestess. [14] Such an interpretation is by no means obligatory. Furthermore, it obscures the real significance the tablet does have. For it is the only other example in the Greek language of εὔχομαι in a legal context. Moreover, we are in a position to deduce the meaning of εὔχομαι in this passage on formal grounds, without resorting to grammatical rules of thumb or etymology. The sentence in Linear Β poses a contrast between the priestess who εὐχετοι and the δᾱμος which φᾱσι about the exact type of land-tenure involved. This combination of εὔχομαι and φημί is familiar from our study of secular εὔχομαι in Homer (see above, pp. 76ff.), where the two words are frequently (10 + times) joined as marked and unmarked words for saying, typically, ‘I, a hero, εὔχομαι about my γένος which is such-and-such, while another φησι about his …’ This is demonstrably the relationship between εὐχετοι and φᾱσι in the tablet. An earlier version [15] of it is preserved which is transcribed as follows:

Translation: A priestess is to have and states she has e-to-ni-jo in the god’s name, while the land official [says] she has o-na-to from the public lands.

PY Eb 297 (Palmer, MGT, p. 211)

In this version the verb of saying is literally omitted from the second clause. One could hardly conceive of a clearer sign that φᾱσι in the other version is an unmarked equivalent of εὐχετοι. {103|104}

It may be objected that applying this Homeric evidence to the Linear Β tablets crosses contextual boundaries. But the formal parallelism justifies us in doing so. Benveniste wants to associate Homeric pedigree statements as sacral utterances with the archaic Roman custom of devotio. The Homeric hero pledges his body that such-and-such is his γένος, just as Decius Mus pledged his in 340 B. C. to the gods of the underworld in order to gain victory for his army. [16] But self-consecration to guarantee victory is one thing, and statements of pedigree are another. An attested formal and contextual link between the two does not in fact exist, in spite of Benveniste’s suggestion of a conceptual link between them. On the other hand, the link between pedigree statements and legal assertions is semantically simple (via ‘say’) and formally supported by the linguistic parallelism we are discussing between Homer and Linear B. Parallels between epic usage and legal usage in Linear Β are powerful parallels, given the ancient pedigrees and conservative ethos of both the Homeric Dichtersprache and legal language. In fact, putative reservations about the decipherment of this Linear Β text and its reliability as evidence are to be rejected. If not, one must consider coincidental the parallel it contains to Homeric usage, a parallel which no one since the decipherment has recognized.

The meaning ‘states, alleges, asserts’ for εὐχετοι in PY Ep 704 is formally supported, then. [17] Let us now set side-by-side these two legal usages of εὔχομαι in Greek:

As summaries of legal disputes, these passages are stylistically and phraseologically comparable. Each consists of two curt clauses connected by δέ whose subjects are the parties to the dispute. In both the form of εὔχομαι appears in the first clause. It belongs to the stressed or marked member of the pair. More strikingly, the word δῆμος/δᾱμος occurs in both passages. Lejeune [18] has defined δᾱμος in Linear Β as “une personalité juridique collective”, which is not an inadequate description of its reference in Σ 500. In this connection it is notable that δαμος occurs in a 6th century Elean inscription (Cauer-Schwyzer D. G. E. 413.8) fixed with the Mycenaean land-tenure term τελεστα. [19] Σ 499–500 is perhaps another instance of the occurrence of this word in an archaic context appropriate to Linear B. Finally, there is the word πιφαύσκων in Σ 500. A variant πιφάσκων {104|105} (cognate of φημί) is attested for it here and every other time the word occurs in Greek epic, although the received text is always πιφαύσκ-. The unanimous confusion of these two words, which are confined to Epic and Aeschylus, is not a simple transcriptional error. It is based on a formal and semantic confusion of πιφάσκω and πιφαύσκω which is of demonstrable antiquity. Etymologically, πιφαύσκ-ω/-ομαι is an archaic derived present of the root attested in φάος ‘light’. The verb should mean ‘show, reveal’, and in fact it does in several Homeric examples:

ψ 202 οὕτω τοι τόδε σῆμα πιφαύσκομαι … ‘in this way I reveal this sign to you …’

The second line of the first example in this list opposes φάσθαι (med. infinitive of φημί) to κεκρυμμένον εἶναι. This use of φάσθαι is a mirror analogy to the combination of notions ‘reveal’ and ‘speak’ in πιφαύσκω/πιφάσκω. [20] Notice also the last example, in which the participle πιφαύσκων is subordinate to the verb of saying μετέειπεν, and compare Σ 499–500 εὔχετο … πιφαύσκων.

If we reconsider the contextual, stylistic, and verbal parallelism of these two attestations of εὔχομαι, a solution to the problem of its meaning in Σ 499 imposes itself. As in the Linear Β tablets, εὔχομαι in the Homeric passage is simply the functionally marked word for ‘say’.

Perhaps this is the place to make yet another suggestion about the legal situation on the shield of Achilles. If our interpretation of εὔχομαι in Σ 499 is correct, the legal conflict is not only dramatic but also thematically relevant to Achilles and explicable in terms of internal evidence from Homer. “One man was saying he paid [the ποινή for murder] in full, the [105|106] other [the victim’s kinsman] was refusing to take anything”. The issue is not whether the fine was actually paid. Nor is it an historic conflict about the commutation of the lex talionis. In dispute is whether the kinsman specifically must take the compensation offered him. Conflict on exactly this issue is implicit in another discussion of ποινή in the Iliad. In Iliad I Ajax is making a final plea to Achilles that he accept the compensation offered him and return to battle. He calls him σχέτλιος and νηλής, and he accuses him of disregarding the real friendship the ambassadors have for him. Then he continues:

The ποινή does not magically relieve its receiver of grief at the loss of his slain brother or son. Nonetheless he takes it, and it is Ajax’s whole point that he takes this social substitute for physical vengeance even against his will. So the question on Achilles’ divinely wrought shield is whether the murdered man’s kinsman has the right actually to refuse the murderer’s offer of ποινή in the same way as Achilles himself refused the embassy’s ἄποινα (so-called at I 120). [21] And we can be certain that the Achilles-figure on the shield will take absolutely nothing. His use of the word μηδὲν in the phrase ὁ δ'ἀναίνετο μηδὲν ἑλέσθαι is in fact an epic obscenity, this being the only attestation in the whole Homeric corpus of what must be considered an un-epic word. [22] So hotly contested is the issue which those old men embossed in gold are still trying to decide. [106|107]

[ back ] 13. On the meaning of these terms, see Palmer 1963: pp. 186-9.

[ back ] 14. Citron 1965: p. 84. Perpillou 1972 has anticipated my assessment of the significance of this evidence if not its interpretation.

[ back ] 15. Palmer 1963: pp. 189-90 lays out the reasons for assuming that Py Eb 297 is an earlier version of PY Ep 704, 5-6, (the historical relationship between the two is not essential to my argument).

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